


The Traveler's Home

by regenderate



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 12:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regenderate/pseuds/regenderate
Summary: She runs an antique shop in Cardiff, the blonde woman. She’s had it as long as anyone can remember, although she can’t be any older than forty. She’s always looked exactly the same, although sometimes her hair is longer or shorter; she’s always worn the same style of shirt, the same calf-length navy blue pants, the same yellow suspenders. Next to the door, a coat rests on a hook, although she rarely puts it on before she goes out.--(Character study of thirteen with the question-- what if she settled down?)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	The Traveler's Home

She runs an antique shop in Cardiff, the blonde woman. She’s had it as long as anyone can remember, although she can’t be any older than forty. She’s always looked exactly the same, although sometimes her hair is longer or shorter; she’s always worn the same style of shirt, the same calf-length navy blue pants, the same yellow suspenders. Next to the door, a coat rests on a hook, although she rarely puts it on before she goes out.

Her store is a cluttered hodgepodge of items from all points in time— the typical old-fashioned jewelry and furniture from the 1800’s, but also sunglasses that she swears were given to her by Audrey Hepburn, a jacket she says belonged to Elvis, and a few little trinkets that, were scientists to analyze them, would be taken immediately for closer study: they are made of no earthly element. In one corner, there’s a police phone booth from the ‘50’s, but she steadfastly refuses the few who offer to buy it— if you ask why, she’ll just tell you it has too many memories for her to consider parting with. 

No one really knows her. Sometimes an oddly-dressed someone from out of town will see the shop on the street and do a double take, stopped cold by the intensely blue door and the words “Treasures and Relics” painted in a messy scrawl on the brick wall above with “Displayed in Stock” scrawled on a paper in the window. They invariably stare for a moment, teetering, before either going in or hurrying away. Those who go in often stay for a while, sometimes hours, sometimes days. Those who hurry away often come back a few years later, and then a few years after that, just to stare, incredulous. But no one in town can tell you much about the woman who runs the treasures and relics shop, except that they bought the most beautiful end table from her— and it was such a deal, too!

But this is how she got to Cardiff:

Once upon a time, the blonde woman who runs the antique shop was a time traveler. For quite a while, thousands of years, actually, she jettisoned herself around time and space, sometimes alone, but usually with people she picked up along the way, learning and growing and changing. 

And then she stopped.

It was more complicated than that, really— she had an adventure that went bad, and then another, and then she wound up stranded on Mars for a while, and by the end of it she realized something: she wasn’t getting nearly as much joy out of this whole thing as she used to.

She was sort of tired, actually.

She’d been tired for a while, but she always thought it was a normal sort of tired for someone her age, the feeling of being tired of life, and also maybe a little sleep-deprived. She’d never considered that maybe she was just tired of traveling. It was only when her good friends, more people she’d picked up along the way, decided it was time to settle back in their homes that she thought about doing the same.

Of course, lots of her friends had left her for the same reasons before. It was the best outcome, really. She lived a dangerous life. It was just that this time, something about it gave her pause. Maybe it was the timing; maybe it was the fact that her friends all had such clear connections to their homes. Either way, she started to think about why she traveled, and in the end she came up with only one reason: because she had no home.

So she decided to create a home.

She landed herself in 1800’s Cardiff and set up shop.

And she stayed. 

And now she presides over the little “Treasures and Relics” shop.

Many have wondered, over the years, how she keeps it open. The answer is complicated, and involves what probably would qualify as fraud if anyone caught her at it. No one’s ever been quite brave enough to ask her to her face— well, no one but the children, and they’re less concerned about how she keeps it open and more concerned about the fantastical stories she tells about every item in her shop. She’s good with kids in a way she never quite manages with adults— there’s something about the way they don’t expect anything of her, they don’t expect politeness or anything. They just want to ask her questions, and she’s always been good at questions. Families will come back over and over, sometimes weekly, their kids begging to go see the lady in the old stuff store, and she always has new items and new stories.

“Will you ever run out of things?” kids ask sometimes.

“Of course, someday,” she always tells them.

“What will you do?” they ask, their eyes wide, staring up at her.

“Well,” she says, glancing towards her old police box, “I suppose that’s how I know it’s time to go off and find some more.”

Sometimes, the kid doing the asking will push it further: “Can I come with you?” they’ll ask. 

The woman just smiles.

She likes seeing them grow up. Sometimes she gets to know a family, and then years later the kids she saw growing up come back with their children, shocked to find the woman in the antique shop exactly the same as she was. They’ve gotten polite, of course, so they don’t ask how it’s still open, they just try to make small talk and let their kids run through the store, pointing at everything. 

Maybe she will go traveling again someday. Maybe she’ll make good on her promise, take one of those kids with her (or, more realistically, jump ahead to a point where they’ve grown up a bit), or maybe she’ll just go on her own, launching herself back into time and space. Nothing lasts forever, after all. Not even little antique shops in Cardiff.

Still. For now, it’s a home.


End file.
